Rainer: a surprising way to double church attendance

The American church is dying. Conversions are declining in almost every denomination. Even in some of the more relatively healthy denominations, conversions to Christianity have stagnated. In our own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which is one of the largest Protestant denominations in the world, baptisms have not increased in decades. Despite the growth of the nation, the SBC is baptizing no more people today than it did in 1950.1

Worse yet, the church is losing influence in culture.

Local churches are having trouble relating to their local community and the younger generation. While some peg this irrelevance as the major underlying factor of declining churches, we believe that it is merely symptomatic of a much greater issue: the church is no longer essential to people's lives. Unless a dramatic change occurs, the American church will continue down the same path as the European church, which is all but dead.

While some churches are thriving, many churches are floundering. The average church is losing the younger generation, and those young adults are not returning. Churches that once were growing are now stagnant. County-seat churches that once were the gathering point for entire communities are now half empty with only gray heads during worship.

How colossal is the problem? Let's take a few steps back in order to grasp the enormity of the issue on a national scale. Clearly individual churches have unique stories. But an understanding of the macro perspective leads to a better diagnosis and path forward for the one church seeking to reverse course.

Looking at the health of the church from the thirty-thousand-foot level, the current state of affairs does not bode well for the future.

If you were to take a peek at the membership rolls of several established churches, a common theme would emerge. What you would find is this: in general, the membership rolls of churches are substantially larger than the average attendance on any given Sunday. In other words, people claim a church, but they do not attend regularly. At some point in the past, they joined and were active. But then they simply stopped attending.

On a national scale the problem of church dropouts is pervasive. The CIA World Factbook reports that 52 percent of the population claims a Protestant church.2 That's a whopping 157 million people as of the date of this writing. How many of these people really attend church? Only about 28 percent of the United States’ population attends a Protestant church.3 So, while 157 million people claim a Protestant church, only about 85 million actually attend that church. As we stated before, if all the church dropouts came back next Sunday, Protestant church attendance would double across the nation.

Rainer, T., Geiger, E., & Rainer, S. S., III. (2010). Essential church. Nashville: B&H.

Sam Rainer will be speaking as part of the All Star Sunday School Training team in Jackson, MS on August 23, 24. David Francis and Josh Hunt will also be speaking.

To schedule an All Star Sunday School Training event, see http://allstarsundayschool.com/ or contact Josh Hunt at josh@joshhunt.com 575.650.4564